yeah...i've had many issues in re. gv icons. I have screenshots of my being able to see them in my forward right view, yet not my right view. Both in flight and in the tower.
BUT for you, make sure you set the "ground view" option of shift f4. If you have not played with these views before, they are shiftF1 full view, shift f2 med, shift f3 short, and shift F4 GROUND.
all medium/short do is lower the viewable distance. This helps me alot in furballs. The ground view (i THINK you have to SET it) moves the viewable distance to 4k from 3k, and should be used when looking for gv's, or in a gv.
It will give you a fps hit, but you can at least spot the gv's. ALSO in your video prefs ingame, there is a slider for ground detail view (think that's what it's called, the bottom slider) and you can adjust it further to the left to b able to c the gv's from further out. That also hill hurt your fps.
Wish HT would quit penalizing guys with med to lower end systems, and reward guys with the higher end systems. Makes no sense what so ever for AH to only allow people with FAST systems the abilitry to see nme gv's (or acks) from a distance, while everybody else can't.